Here is a picture of the men in my family, all of them are gone except me. I am sitting on my grandfather's knee, my father is sitting next to his father, and in the back are my brothers sitting on my uncle's knees. My uncle was a Marine, fought in the Pacific, including Tarawa, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. He made it home, and in fact, while sailing from place to place in the war he managed to take the pay from many a sailor playing poker -- he arrived home with enough money to buy a brand new Cadillac.
Watching Yancy Derringer brings back memories -- my father did his residency at Charity hospital in New Orleans, my uncle was a Mississippi gambler, and my grandfather was a woodworker. I got to visit him and the shop in 1959, and we had a good ol' time - riding around on the Delta in his pickup truck, hanging out in the shop, drinkin' Coca Colas right out of the Coke machine.
My uncle inherited the shop after my grandfather died and I spent the summer of 1967 working for him. Tough boss, he expected a lot, and I worked like a sumbitch. He had his office in the middle of the millwork shop, a small, windowless room with his desk and a chair for visitors. At the end of the day I would go and sit there and wait for a ride home. He loved to play jokes, and one afternoon as I was waiting I picked up a trade journal and was engrossed in reading the articles about efficiently processing wood into salable products.
BOOM!!! What the hey? Unbeknownst to me, my uncle, always the joker, had pulled out his .38 revolver and fired a round through the floor. I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was loud, I tell ya.
